Join Vita and Theo Chocolate the first Friday of each month for a public cupping and chocolate tasting taking place at the Capitol Hill Caffe Vita. The cupping begins at 10am so be prepared to have your mind blown by these delicious chocolates which the New York Times has described as “a tasty rush that goes straight to the back of your skull…………”

A portion of today’s proceeds from Caffe Vita, Via Tirbunali and some of our favorite northwest Italian restaurants will be donated to the victims of the L’Aquila earthquake. This tragic earthquake hit 6.3 on the Richter scale and devastated the central Italian region of Abruzzo on April 6th 2009 @ 3:25AM, taking close to 300 lives, hospitalizing over 25,000 and displacing more than 60,000.

You can read more about it in today’s Seattle Times Dining Section.

We hope to see you out tonight!

vita and one pot team up with foodista on an experimental dinner…

www.foodista.com is charging ahead with their plans to become the wikipedia of food (and recipes and ingredients) on the web and they are doing a lovely job. one pot, caffe vita, foraged and found edibles, and chef conor donahue got together with foodista to test the technology… in real time.

the idea was rather simple – source all the best foraged items available in the northwest – lay the stuff out in a kitchen – add three chefs – and let them cook up new recipes from scratch. add foodista to translate the rapid cooking to recipe form – and publish the recipes and documentation (in real time) invite friends and host a dinner wherein all the guests can take home the recipes they just feasted upon. share it with the world. this was our first foray into this realm – expect more to come.

here is the menu and links to the recipes.

raw porcini salad on lemon balm leaves

butter clam fritters with wild sorrel tartar sauce

raw local scallops with sea beans and shiso

wood violet and miners lettuce salad with elderflower vinaigrette with fried morels

octopus, garlic scape, and wild onion blossoms

local farro with walnuts, purslane, and scallions

elk braised with gathered figs

elderflower shortbread with strawberries in elderflower syrup.

caffe vita farm direct gayo river sumatra

photos by melissa peterman

Potlatch after Sasquatch
TONIGHT!: Thursday June 4th. Breaking the Ban and giving it all away!
7pm – 10pm Caffe Vita
Capitol Hill. 1005 e Pike.

Featuring intimate sets by Grant Olsen of Arthur and Yu, Say Hi (solo), Mount Eerie/Phil Elverum, and Shawn Smith of Brad.

One Pot will be preparing and giving away bowls of thoughtfully prepared soup, Caffe Vita will be handing out mugs of their Farm Direct coffee, music will fill the cafe and pour out onto Pike Street and artist Ty Willman will be donating the proceeds from his new work. This region has a long history of “potlatch” gatherings; we might not be burning canoes or breaking coppers on June 4th but there certainly will be much offered in the way of song, food, and coffee.

$15/person. All proceeds go to The Vera Project. Tickets at the door.

pot·latch noun. A party or celebration that could involve extravagant or competitive giving and destruction of valued items.

Potlatch Ban. Potlatching was made illegal in Canada in 1885 and the United States in the late nineteenth century, largely at the urging of missionaries and government agents who considered it “a worse than useless custom,” and found the flagrant generosity objectionable.

the vita table continues with harvard anthropologist richard wrangham and his provocative new book, CATCHING FIRE: how cooking made us human.

did cooking – more than the use of tools or meat eating – push forward our evolution and make us human?

wrangham posits that the innovation of cooking food – breaking down its components to more digestible forms – is what unleashed sufficient energy and nutrients to make possible the fueling of the mighty human mind. he also delves fearlessly into controversial implications for the raw foods movement, the diet industry, our food labeling system, and even gender roles.

one pot, caffe vita, and kim ricketts will set a festive table amidst the towering bags of green coffee on capitol hill to welcome dr. wrangham in conversation and heavy feasting. a team of chefs including michael hebb, conor donahue (range, farralon), kurt timmermeister (kurtwood farms), and mark fuller (spring hill) will be cooking a seasonal meal in a neapolitan wood fired oven. renowned author greg atkinson, dr. andy mcshea and debra music from theo chocolate and michael hebb will launch into an in-depth conversation with dr. wrangham.

$45/person. includes a signed copy of catching fire. byo wine.
make a reservation here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/69522
location: 1005 East Pike 7pm